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Study: Only 6% of top online retailers include a Facebook login button

Social Labs today released its findings regarding how online retailers implement Facebook’s Login Button. The company examined how the top 500 online retailers integrated the plugin as an alternative option for their account creation, site registration, and site login processes. The 14-page study titled “Log In With Facebook and the 2012 Internet Retailer Top 500” (PDF, via All Facebook) shows the numbers aren’t pretty: only 30 out of the top 500 sites, or 6 percent, integrated Facebook with the core of their e-commerce site for the purpose of user account creation.

As a result, Sociable Labs says the adoption of the plugin by the Internet Retailer Top 500 is still in its beginning stages and believes this shows “an untapped opportunity area.” The research firm lists the following benefits of such integration: simplified account creation, elimination of required site-specific passwords, increased onsite personalization, richer CRM data, and increased referral traffic from Facebook.

So, what’s stopping these companies from jumping on the bandwagon? There are three main reasons, according to Social Labs: technical barriers to implementation, perceived security concerns, and level of effort required for implementation. Not only does the company think these will start to go away soon, but it argues Facebook will remain the dominant social login option (over Twitter, Yahoo, and Google) when it comes to online retailers.

Here’s an excerpt of the conclusion from the study:

The largest online retailers have been slower to adopt social technology, and Log in with Facebook in particular, than the broader web community. Today, according to Facebook, over 1 million websites have integrated Log in with Facebook. There remains a huge untapped opportunity for the IR 500 to take advantage of Log in with Facebook and its many benefits. Today, there are only a few good examples of Log in with Facebook among the IR 500, and even fewer that have advanced beyond Log in with Facebook to provide truly transformative personalized, social experiences for their users.

If you prefer the visual version, here’s an infographic:

There has been quite some controversy surrounding the use of Facebook (and Twitter) login plugins, especially as of late. For example, two recent surveys resulted in great discussions: this weekend on Hacker News in regards to marketer Jamie Grove‘s blog post titled “34.5% of US Internet Population not using Facebook/Twitter” and last weekend on Hacker News in regards to DailyCred‘s post “Surprise! People hate being forced to use Facebook.”

I believe offering a Facebook login and social integration in general is a good idea, especially in e-commerce. That being said, if you’re forcing your users to login with Facebook, you’re making a big mistake.

Emil was a reporter for The Next Web between 2012 and 2014. Over the years, he has covered the tech industry for multiple publications, including Ars Technica, Neowin, TechSpot, ZDNet, and CNET. Stay in touch via Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.